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In both joke-telling and investment writing, timing is everything. Unfortunately for Jim Jubak, a veteran financial writer with MSN Money, his timing is off on an otherwise OK piece on European stocks.

The piece reviews the downs and ups of the European stock market. It then argues that "by July, I think we could see the euro debt crisis again in full flower," driven by bad first-quarter reports and midyear downgrades in economic projections.

"If that timetable is right, I'd expect to see bargains on the stocks of great European companies in July and perhaps sooner as the crisis leads the market down in fits and starts," Jubak writes.

If Jubak is so confident that the buoyant European stock market is about to tank, perhaps he should be advising readers to sell stocks short or buy some put options on the market.

Instead, he is delivering an actionable investment story that readers may only be able to take action on a few months from now. Still, you might want to file Jubak's stock ideas away for future reference.

At least there are other stories out there that don't suffer from this timing problem.

Coal stocks, which had a fantastic run a few years ago, have fallen hard in recent years amid environmental concerns about this cheap but dirty fuel source. On Seeking Alpha, there are two stories that take opposing views on coal stocks.

One piece, "Coal is Dead," argues that coal shares are headed for further declines.

The article argues that bearish coal investors could buy long-dated out-of-the-money put options on several stocks.

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The piece argues that coal stocks will benefit from a further rise in natural-gas prices.

Moreover, an article in last week's Barron's magazine makes a sensible case for a comeback for coal, though it argues that investors need to be selective in the stocks they choose to invest in.

So which side is right?

While coal faces headwinds related to growing environmental concerns, this Lazarus of a sector has been down and out before and yet managed to register some of the strongest stock gains of any subsector in the past decade, prior to 2010. Right now, it does seem like a depressed corner of the energy sector, and that could spell opportunity.

If you, like most investors, see technical analysis as only one approach to analyzing stocks, you will see the obvious limitations of such a story.

Finally, on a day in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit its all-time record, a story by Paul La Monica, a veteran writer with CNN Money, nicely compares the environment surrounding this stock market with that of the last market top of October 2007.

"The job market is still considerably worse than October 2007. The economy is barely growing," writes La Monica. "Housing prices have not come back completely. And the federal government is much more heavily in hock.

"The market is priced as if the U.S. recovery is in full-blown expansion mode. But that's simply not the case. Instead, we are merely entering year four of what's been a subpar recovery. And there are more reasons to be worried than excited."

But remember how things ended up in the months after October 2007. Do we really see that economic environment as being preferable to this one?

Maybe Paul is doing his part to provide the wall of worry for stocks to continue their steady climb.